Part 21

We must now, according to the Itinerary, leave the Watling-street, and go to Maidstone. The road hither passes by that famous British monument called Kits-coty-house. It cannot be disputed but that Maidstone is the next Roman station. _Mædwæg_ I apprehend signifies the meadows upon the river _Vaga_, which are here beautiful: whether the Latin word be _Madviacis_, or _Vagniacis_, I see no difficulty in forming it from the British.[109] The archbishop of Canterbury had a palace here, founded by John Ufford, finished by Simon Islip: a college or hospital was erected by A. B. Boniface, and a chantry by Thomas Arundel, now the free-school. About 1720, they dug up several canoos, made of hollowed trees, in the marshes of the river Medway above Maidstone: one is used for a boat to this day. I saw, in the hands of Dr. Dodd, a British coin of _electrum_, found at Addington near Malling, anno 1720, in the foundation of a stone wall: on the concave side a British horse, rude enough; the convex was plain.

[Sidenote: +Durolenum.+]

From thence the Itinerary leads us to _Durolenum_. The learned Talbot first guessed it to be Charing; and to me he seems to be in the right. It is upon a spring of the river Len. The present name is derived from the British _Caer_, as they called all Roman towns in after-times: anciently it was wrote _Cering_ with a Saxon termination, intimating the meadows it stands upon. Roman antiquities are found all about, but nothing I have yet met withal, that particularly fixes the spot the Roman city stood upon. Near is a manor called Broughton; Chart[110] is the name of the hundred, from two little adjoining villages: but at this place the distances answer well, and the roads in many parts appear: that from hence to Canterbury passed by Chilham; so over the river Stour by Sharnford, which retains the British name of a causeway. The archbishops of Canterbury had a castellated palace at Charing, probably given them by some of the first Saxon kings, as a royal demesne of theirs: there are large ruins of it still left. Here was a chantry founded by Sir John Burley. All the ground upon the river Len at the bottom of the great ridge of hills is sand, sometimes exceeding white; between that and the bottom of the hills it is flinty: the hills themselves are pure chalk. All Kent consists of large tracts of ground gradually rising from the east to a western ridge steep that way, so succeeded by another of like manner; but any of these tracts are made up of little hills and short valleys, quite of a different nature from those on the west side of the island: and Mr. Camden has observed this before us, as to the northern part of the island, p. 533. _Britannia_. We may gather an idea of the natural reason of it from what we spoke at first, of the ground hardening upon the instant of the earth’s rotation.

After we have made this excursion with Antoninus, to take in these two stations, which seems to have been done to conduct travellers the nearest way to the _portus Lemanis_, we return again to Rochester, that we may finish the progress of the Watling-street.

[Sidenote: +Feversham.+]

[Sidenote: TAB. XXVII.]

[Sidenote: +Newington.+]

[Sidenote: Ro. _town_.]

From Rochester the Watling-street continues very strait to Canterbury, by Feversham, whither I went to visit the remains of the monastery founded by king Stephen, and where he was buried with his family. At present nothing left but two gate-houses, and they of mean structure: the hall was standing intire within this forty year; but now the whole monastery is level with the ground, and converted into orchards, so that I could not so much as guess at the place where the church was. They have a report still, that at the dissolution of abbeys they took up the coffin of lead wherein the king was buried, and sold it: as for his corpse, they threw it into the Thames. Here king Ethelstan enacted laws, anno 903. At Newington seems to have been another station: many Roman coins and antiquities have been found there. Vide large accounts thereof in Burton’s Itinerary, p. 181. and Casaubon’s translation of Antoninus Philos. Beyond Broughton, which seems to have been another,[111] you come to a very high hill, steep on the west. The Watling-street here first presents the tower of the cathedral in its line, and both together make a fine show:

_Apparet rursum moles operosa viarum, Consurgit stratis agger ubique suis._

[Sidenote: +Durovernum.+]

[Sidenote: TAB. XCVI.]

[Sidenote: TAB. LIV.]

[Sidenote: TAB. XXV.]

[Sidenote: TAB. XXIV.]

[Sidenote: TAB. XXV.]

Canterbury is deservedly famous for religious as well as Roman antiquity, being the place where christianity first made its entrance among our Saxon ancestors. Here are many remains of Roman buildings, many made of Roman materials in the Saxon times: many antiquities found in digging about the hop-grounds; your lordship has quantities of them. The city is strongly walled about, and many lunettes or towers at due intervals; a deep ditch close underneath, and a great rampart of earth within. The original ground-plot here, as in many other cities, is spoiled by churches built in the middle of streets. To the south is an old obscure gate, called Worth gate, partly walled up: it is under the castle. This is intirely a Roman work: the semi-circular arch is of Roman brick, beautifully turned; the piers of stone; the thickness of it is three Roman feet. I suppose this the original gate of the Roman city, and from hence went the road which presently divides itself into two: the one goes by Chilham to _Durolenum_, over the river at Sharnford, as we said; the other goes in a very strait line, by the name of Stone-street, to the port of _Lemanis_. The castle built here in William the Conqueror’s time, extending its limits beyond this gate, was the occasion of blocking it up; and so Winchup gate was built a little further eastward, to supply its use. The castle is much of the same form as that at Rochester, and the walls of the same thickness. A little further within the walls is a very high mount, called Dungeon hill: a ditch and high bank inclose the _area_ before it: it seems to have been part of the old castle. Opposite to it without the walls is a hill, seeming to have been raised by the Danes when they besieged the city. The top of Dungeon hill is equal to the top of the castle, and has a fine prospect over the city and country. The materials of the city-walls are chiefly flint. Next to this, where the Watling-street comes,[112] is Riding-gate, built by a mayor of the city, but evidently in the place of the Roman one; for there is part of the Roman arch, and the pier of one side, still visible, but much lower than the present gate: and in a yard close by is part of the arch of a postern, or foot-gate, by the side of it: these arches are of Roman brick, and there are in the wall here and there some more fragments of the Roman work. The draught of it I have given in the plate of the city ground-plot, 96. Hence the Watling-street passes directly to Dover, over Barham downs. Next to East-gate is another gate, opposite to what they call St. Ethelbert’s tower: this is the way to the port of _Rutupium_. Here is the famous monastery of St. Augustin, the first metropolitan, built, as they say, near the palace of the converted king Ethelbert: two gates remain next the city, and both very stately: perhaps one belonged to the palace, the other to the monastery, which doubtless as magnificent as richly endowed; and such its ruins demonstrate, and the great compass of ground it took up, incircled with a very high wall. Great vying was ever here between the religious of St. Austin and of Tho. à Becket, both very rich and contentious. At the west end of this church, as I conjecture, were two great towers: half of one is still remaining, called Ethelbert’s tower: all the whole stones and pillars about it are skinned off as far as they can reach; and every year a buttress, a side of an arch, or the like, passes _sub hasta_. There is part of the other standing, if it can be so said, that is only not fallen; I call it _muro torto_: it is a vast angular piece of the tower, about thirty foot high, which has been undermined by digging away a course at bottom, in order to be thrown down; but it happened only to disjoint itself from the foundation, and leaping, as it were, a little space, lodged itself in the ground in that inclining state, to the wonderment of the vulgar who do not discern the meaning of it, though the foundation it came from is sufficiently visible: thus happening to be equally poized, it is a sight somewhat dreadful, and forbids a too near approach on any side, with the apprehension of its falling that way. Under St. Ethelbert’s tower is the porch where St. Augustin and his six successors, as Bede tells us, were interred: the arched roof is left, but ready to fall: the pavement is gone, in the middle of which was an altar. The adjacent close is full of religious ruins and foundations, one great part turned into a stable near the almery: all over they are busy in pulling it up, to sell the stones; which generally pays the rent, and yet the tenants of such places thrive never the more. In one corner of this field are the walls of a chapel, said to have been a christian temple before St. Augustin’s time, and reconsecrated by him to St. Pancras: a great apple-tree and some plum-trees now grow in it: the lower part of it is really old, and mostly made of Roman brick, and thicker walls than the superstructure: there is an old Roman arch on the south side toward to altar, the top of it about as high as one’s nose; so that the ground has been much raised: the present east window is a pointed arch, though made of Roman brick, later than St. Austin’s time: near it a little room, said to have been king Ethelbert’s pagan chapel: however it be, both these and the wall adjoining are mostly built of Roman brick: the breadth of the mortar is rather more than the brick, and full of pebbles; but the mark of the devil’s claws, there observed by the vulgar, is fantastical. The garden and orchard adjoining seem to lie in their ancient form: there is a large square mount close by the wall, which it equals in height, and gives a prospect into the fields. Your lordship has a huge water-pipe dug up among many other antiquities in a Roman bath discovered at Canterbury: it is five inches and a half diameter at the smaller end, seventeen long, seven in diameter at the broad end: they were fastened into one another with strong terrace cement. The great number of other antiquities of all sorts, found at and about this city, make part of your fine collection.

Eastward of this, and farther out of the city, is the church of St. Martin, said to be the christian place of devotion, where king Ethelbert’s queen used to go, and St. Austin’s first see: it is built, for the most part, of Roman brick: in the middle is a very large old-fashioned font, supposed that where the king was baptised. North of the city is a very small remnant of St. Gregory’s chapel, founded probably by Austin to the honour of his patron.

The cathedral of Canterbury is very stately, but neither in length, breadth, nor height, especially in front, equal to Lincoln, in my judgement: it is intirely vaulted with stone, and of a very pretty model of building, but much too high for its breadth, as all Gothic buildings were. I believe they got this ill taste from building upon the old foundations, the ancient churches being much narrower and lower than in the succeeding times: when greater riches flowed in upon them, they carried their walls and roofs to an unseemly height. The place where Thomas à Becket’s shrine stood, is sufficiently known by the mark of the devoted knees quite around it, which have left deep impressions in the hard coarse marble. The Black Prince has a noble monument of brass: that of Henry IV. is a good tomb, and there is a pretty chapel hard by, to say mass for him. There is an old picture of arch-bishop Becket’s martyrdom, as called; and upon the wall an old painting of the siege of Jerusalem, in our old habits. Here are several monuments of the bishops. The metropolitan chair is of grey marble, standing behind the high altar: the cloysters are pretty good, and a very large chapel near them, called Sermon-house, wainscotted with Irish oak. The reason of the ancient name of this British city seems intimated in this verse of Virgil,

_Divinosque lacus & averna sonantia silvis._ Æn. iii.

The poor derivation of the commentators thereon ought to be referred to Tuscan original, to which our Celtic is a-kin.

[Sidenote: +Rutupiæ.+]

[Sidenote: TAB. XXXV. 2d Vol.]

Leaving Canterbury,[113] I journeyed to find out _Rutupiæ_. At Wingham I saw a very large barrow, of Celtic make, by the road side, called the Mount: upon enquiry I found there were several more in the parish, and that a lane here is called Port-lane; doubtless the Roman road, for here the common road goes more southward. The Roman city and port without peradventure was the place now called Stonar, or _Stanar_, as they pronounce it, from the stony foundations I chuse to think; over-against Sandwich, or rather half a mile lower upon the river coming from Canterbury, and almost incompassed by it. This river at first discharged itself into the sea by Ebbesflete, north of the Roman city, till the sand, pouring so directly upon it, obliged the stream to slide under the cliff by Richborough castle, and so by Sandwich: then, coming in obliquely by the weight of its waters, it maintains its passage. I conceit the etymology of _Rhutupium_, about which the learned contend much, is to be sought for in this _Ebbesflete_; and that this water was originally called _Ube_, or _Tyvi_: _rhyd tyf_ or _tyvi_, is the passage over it: the Saxons called it _Reptacester_, a contraction only from _Rhutupicester_: and so our _Ebbe_ at present came from them; _Ruptimuth_ anciently. Hence you see far into the isle of Thanet and Ramsgate cliff, named from the Romans, thrusting its chalky promontory into the sea. This was the chief port for the Roman navy.[114] At present there is only a farm-house or two, standing on an elevation in the marshes: they informed me that here had been a great city, and that they can discover all the streets when the corn is on the ground; and those streets are nothing but pure gravel laid very deep: innumerable stones and foundations have been dug up, but now mostly evacuated; and no doubt Sandwich was built out of it. The river runs close by it, with difficulty preserving its current to the sea; but no doubt originally it was an open beach, or port: perhaps the city itself was an island. The old mouth of the river is now filled up by the astonishing quantity of small pebbles thrown into this bay by the roll of the ocean: you see here a hundred acres of this flat ground covered over with them six or seven foot deep, and looking blue like the water. I fancied the people that lived here, in like danger with those that travel the sandy deserts of Africa, or Arabia. Here are two elevations, where they say two churches stood: upon one, where an elder-tree grows, much rubble and stone is left, but no part of any building; nor is it easy to distinguish what it was originally.

[Sidenote: TAB. XCVII.]

[Sidenote: Amphitheatre]

[Sidenote: TAB. XXXVI. 2d Vol.]

Richborough castle, as now called, was the fort as it were to this city, and station of the garrison, which was to watch and defend the port and sea-coast hereabout; or rather one of those castles built upon the _littus Saxonicum_, in the time of Theodosius: it is a mile off Stanar and Sandwich, situate upon the highest elevation near hand, and being the only small part of a bold shore in all this bay: the river runs at the foot of it,

———— _arvaque & urbem Littore diductam angusto interluit æstu._ +Virg.+ Æn. iii.

It is a most noble remnant of Roman antiquity, where in later times of their empire the _Legio_ II. _Aug._ was quartered: the walls on three sides are pretty intire, and in some places still about twenty-five or thirty foot high, without any ditch: the side next the sea being upon a kind of cliff, the top of the wall is but level with the ground: beside, at the east angle the wall descends to another slope just upon the river, which seems to have been in the nature of an outwork, or gradual ascent into the castle: the ground on the inside is pretty much raised. In the middle of the north-east side there is a square work jutting out from the wall, which seems to have been an oblique[115] gate to enter at, for those that came from the water side; and it is not unlikely that gap on the north-west side was another gate: it was a square CV. paces one way, CL. the other; according to the Roman method of making camps, a third part longer than their breadth. There is a foundation within, which has caused many words among the Kentish antiquaries; seems to have been a _Pharos_, or lodging for the commanding officer, a _prætorium_: there are foundations of several apartments, the walls monstrously thick and strong. It is manifest to any one that seriously contemplates the ruins of the walls in divers places, that this castle was destroyed by great violence and industriously; I guess, by the Saxons immediately after the Romans left the island, when they could more boldly make descénts upon the coast: the reason why, is evident from the intent of these castles: upon the eastern corner, especially, great piles of wall lie one upon another like rocks: in other places cavities are hewn out of its thickness, that would make good lodging-rooms: the manner of the composition of the walls is seven courses of small hewn stone, which take up four Roman feet: then two courses of Roman brick, which are white, like the brick in the isle of Ely. I observe all the brick about Sandwich to be of the same colour, made of whitish clay. The walls are twelve foot thick: the inward body thereof is made of flint and excessive hard mortar. Sandwich bears directly south. Dr. Holland talks of a carved head over one of the gates; but I could find no such thing now. In the way thither, upon an eminence is the carcass of a castrensian amphitheatre made of turf; I suppose, for the exercise and diversion of the garrison: the soil of it is gravel and sand, and has been long ploughed over, that we need not wonder it is so level. There are three Roman _tumuli_ before Sandwich west gate; one a windmill stands on: it is not easy to assign which Contentus was buried under:

_Contentum tellus quem Rutupina tegit._ +Auson.+

South of Sandwich, as we go along upon the sea-shore, are six large and broad Celtic _tumuli_, equidistant: the second from the town has been dug away, to raise a little fort upon the road: they all stand in a line east and west.[116] This flat coast is fenced against the ocean by the sand-downs, which in Lincolnshire we call _meals_: but within the memory of man, as they told me, the sea has commenced a new method of guarding against its own violence, by covering the shore, for a great depth and height, with the pebbles afore mentioned; which is an odd mutation in nature; and it is observable that these pebbles come from the south. I rode from Sandwich as far as Hithe, upon the brink of the shore or cliff, in sight of France all the way; and nothing could be more entertaining in this autumnal season, when the weather is generally clear, serene and calm. Much sea _tithymal_ grows here, and a very pretty plant, _papaver cornutum flore luteo_, rock samphire feeding upon _petroleum_, a most excellent pickle, and many more.[117] The murmur of the ocean has a noble solemnity in it, as Homer says, when latinised,

_Eructante salo raucam dant littora vocem._

More copiously expressed in Virgil,

_Et gemitum ingentem pelagi, pulsataque saxa, Audimus longe, fractasque ad littora voces. Exsultantque vada atque æstu miscentur arenæ._ Æn. iii.

which is an exact idea of this place. By listening attentively I observed this noise of the ocean is by fits, at short but equal intervals; which I believe gave occasion to that fancy of the ancients, that every tenth wave was the largest; of which Ovid has a distich.

[Sidenote: TAB. XXXVII. 2nd Vol.]